What Are Rich Results? How Structured Data Creates Enhanced Search Listings

Rich results are search listings that show more than a title, a URL, and a text snippet: a recipe with its rating and cooking time, a product with its price and availability, a breadcrumb trail in place of a long URL. They appear when a page carries structured data, a standardized description of its content, that makes it eligible for one of the enhanced formats Google supports. Eligibility is the most structured data can give you. Google decides whether to show the enhancement for any given search.

How Structured Data Leads to a Rich Result

Structured data labels the parts of a page in a shared vocabulary such as schema.org, so Google does not have to infer them from the text. Google’s introduction to structured data uses a recipe as its example: when a page describes the recipe’s title, author, and other details in structured data, “Google Search can use that information to display a rich result for the recipe.”

Two limits sit next to that promise. First, Google ties structured data to how a listing can appear, and its one statement about ranking is narrow: its general structured data guidelines explain that a structured data manual action “means that a page loses eligibility for appearance as a rich result; it doesn’t affect how the page ranks in Google web search.” Second, valid markup only makes a page eligible. Those same guidelines must be followed “to be eligible for appearance as a rich result,” and eligibility does not guarantee display.

Which Rich Results Exist Today

Google keeps the current list in its Search Gallery, with a documentation page for each feature and its required properties. Examples include Article, Breadcrumb, Course list, Event, Job posting, Local business, Product snippet, Recipe, Review snippet, and Video. Most features list required properties, and a page that leaves out a required property is not eligible for that feature even if the rest of the markup is valid. The rule varies by type: for Article, Google’s documentation states, “There are no required properties; instead, add the properties that apply to your content.”

The list changes, and two formats that older guides still recommend are gone:

• HowTo. Google’s August 2023 announcement narrowed both HowTo and FAQ results, and an update to the same post states: “As of September 13, Google Search no longer shows How-to rich results on desktop, which means this result type is now deprecated.”
• FAQ. The same 2023 post limited FAQ rich results to “well-known, authoritative government and health websites.” Google’s Search Central changelog then recorded that the feature “will no longer appear in Google Search starting May 7, 2026,” and later recorded the removal of the FAQ documentation with the reason: “The FAQ rich result feature is no longer shown in Google Search results.”

Markup for these types can stay on a page without harm, but it no longer produces an enhanced listing.

Reviews on Your Own Site

Star ratings have their own limit. In a 2019 post on review rich results, Google explained that it calls a review “self-serving” when “a review about entity A is placed on the website of entity A,” whether in the site’s own markup or through an embedded third-party widget. The post states: “Self-serving reviews are no longer displayed for businesses and organizations (the LocalBusiness and Organization schema types).” A business marking up its own testimonials on its own site will not get stars next to its listing, however well the markup is written.

Choosing a Format

Google supports JSON-LD, Microdata, and RDFa. Its introduction to structured data treats all three as equally acceptable when the markup is valid, and recommends whichever format is easiest to implement and maintain, which in most cases is JSON-LD. JSON-LD sits in its own script block instead of inside the visible HTML, which can make it simpler to add and update than markup woven into page elements.

Keeping Markup Accurate and Current

Google’s guidelines tie eligibility to an accurate description of the page:

• Mark up only content that visitors can see on the page.
• Keep prices, availability, ratings, and dates in the markup in step with what the page displays.
• Do not mark up reviews or ratings that are not genuine or not shown.

A violation can lead to a structured data manual action, which removes rich result eligibility; the Manual Actions report in Search Console is where it would appear.

Testing and Monitoring

The Rich Results Test checks a single URL or code sample and reports which rich result types it is eligible for, with any errors and warnings. Search Console’s rich result reports then show, across the site, which pages have valid markup and which have errors, which is how a template change that breaks markup on hundreds of pages gets noticed.

Questions About Rich Results

Does structured data improve rankings?
Google presents structured data as a way to become eligible for rich results. Its guidelines speak to ranking only for the penalty case: losing rich result eligibility through a structured data manual action “doesn’t affect how the page ranks in Google web search.” That sentence describes the penalty’s scope; it is not a measurement of what markup does to rankings in general.

Should I still add FAQ or HowTo markup?
Not for a rich result. Neither format produces an enhanced listing in Google Search now. If the markup is already on your pages, it does no harm.